Aave's Price Rose 20,000% in Ethereum's DeFi Explosion

Popular DeFi lending Aave (LEND) is booming once again today, after racking up a further 16.2% growth in the last 24 hours to reach its current value of $0.841.

Aave has been on an almost unrelenting uptrend for almost a year now, and has seen its price climb from $0.0043 a year ago, up to its all-time highest value of $0.862 earlier today. In total, this represents a gain of almost 20,000% in the last year—making LEND one of the best performing cryptocurrencies of all time.

LEND has also put on a strong performance in the short term, having gained 44.6% in the last week, 109.8% in the last fortnight, and 211.3% in the last 30 days. This growth positions Aave as the 21st largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, with a market cap just north of $1.06 billion.

This growth appears to be a direct consequence of Aave's rapidly growing popularity as a DeFi lending platform—since the total value of cryptocurrencies locked up in the platform has multiplied more than ten-fold in the last two months. As per stats from DeFi Pulse, Aave is now the most successful DeFi platform with around $1.52 billion in cryptocurrencies locked in the protocol.

What Is Chainlink? A Beginner’s Guide to the Decentralized Oracle Network

Blockchain technology is powerful but has a fundamental limitation: it cannot access real-world data on its own. Smart contracts, essential to many blockchains and decentralized finance applications, rely on external data to function. This is where “oracle networks” like Chainlink come in. Oracles enable smart contracts to securely pull data from a wide range of information sources, instead of relying on a single provider. Over 14 blockchain ecosystems are compatible with Chainlink, including Et...

Aave isn't the only DeFi cryptocurrency to have shot through the roof this morning. Other smaller DeFi platforms including Serum (SRM) and YFII-Finance (YFII) have also gained more than 10% today. Reserve Rights Token (RSR) is up 7% since yesterday after being listed on Binance, whereas micro-cap DeFi asset OpenPredict (OPT) is up 38.6% in the last day.

Overall, there is now more than $7 billion in cryptocurrencies locked up in DeFi—a gain of more than 600% in the last 3 months. Another sign of a growing bubble.